-The Times of India Crest Cash transfers have been described as the world's favourite new anti-poverty device. As India gets set to implement it, TOI-Crest finds out if the politics will ever be divorced from the cash The UPA government's ambitious plan to introduce direct cash transfers (DCT) by January 1, 2013 reflects both the political desperation of a beleaguered government and the urgent need to reform India's inefficient and corrupt public...
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Lobbying simplified: do we need it?-Shantanu Bhattacharji
-The Business Standard Why the hue and cry over Walmart? Many of India Inc's big ones are no strangers to lobbying in the US There is a very fine line that separates lobbying from bribery, and there are diverse opinions on what kind of influential pressure on lawmakers qualifies as acceptable, and what doesn't. Quite clearly, bribery is illegal and unacceptable, there is nothing wrong in lobbying per se -- at least...
More »Walmart lobbyist was hired by India for n-deal-Shubhajit Roy
-The Indian Express Patton Boggs, one of the lobbying firms which represented global retail chain Walmart, was hired by the Indian embassy in the US in 2008 to help clinch the India-US nuclear deal. News of Walmart spending Rs 125 crore in the last four years to lobby with US lawmakers disrupted the Rajya Sabha Monday, with MPs alleging that the company had indulged in corruption to enter India. Patton Boggs’s web site...
More »MGNREGS: Fake and Fraudulent-Akash Bisht and Sadiq Naqvi
-Pratirodh.com The streets of the obscure town of Pandharkawda in Yavatmal district of Maharashtra have come to life. Hundreds of villagers crowd them for the weekly haat to buy their supplies of vegetables, spices, pulses and tobacco, while farmers throng shops selling seeds, pesticides, manure and farm commodities. Dressed in bright cotton sarees, women haggle with vendors. Even doctors, especially dentists, are having a busy day with long queues of patients...
More »Start now, fix later -Samar Halarnkar
-The Hindustan Times Indians love slogans. So, since Independence, successive governments have offered catch lines to their electorates. Some slogans were inopportune because they were of dubious accuracy. Jawaharlal Nehru’s 1950s ‘Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai’ — Indians and Chinese are brothers — (even Nehru did not believe this), led to a battlefield defeat. The Congress’ 1975 Emergency-era ‘Indira is India and India is Indira’ and the BJP’s 2004 ‘India Shining’ were electoral disasters. Some...
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